RK ARCHIVE - Recall Mark Warner

Edwards was only 23 when these strategies last failed across America. Perhaps he has been unfamiliar with them until now. He also said things like the U.S. is the only place in the world where poor people live separate from rich people. Say what? Every society in the history of human time has done so. He and Elizabeth presented these ideas as if he had heard them for the first time and was awakened by them and no one else knew about them yet.

This is quite different from the economic populism we've been hearing recently from Jim Webb, but Edwards now seems to be riding on the momentum which Webb hatched last Tuesday night in his rousing populist speech in opposition to the President's State of the Union. But from what I have heard so far I find that they hold quite contrary views - Webb cuts through academic rubric and partisan bullshit to get to the core of things. I was particularly impressed in Webb's debate with George Allen - before he was cut off - when he talked about the specific responsibility the state of Virginia has to black people as per the specific history of the region. Academia has long extended the cloak of victimization to nearly everyone on every social scale and pay grade and in doing so, has excused itself from the specific responsibilities to its own regional poor.

Indeed, these new ideas of Edwards, which appear to be primarily based in philosophy of the 1930s, are the ideas which sent people like Webb and millions of other plain folk in the rural South and urban America away from the Democratic Party in the first place. Edwards' new pitch is also vastly different from the talk we hear today from Wes Clark, who brings in a new vision of the Labor Union as a vehicle for the transformation of worker's lives, not necessarily in opposition to management, but more as a church group does or like the "worker's circle" in Japanese industry, enhancing cooperation between worker and management and equitably improving the lives of both.

Webb and Clark bring us forward. Edwards brings us back to the failed policies of the Sixties. The Clintons and the DLC reacted to the welfare-state culture of the Sixties, but they went too far and fell into alliance with Wall St. at the expense of the worker and the common people. But there is no going back to failed and finished policies. Webb and Clark offer a path forward to a responsible middle ground.

But after the Democratic National Committee speeches Friday, Edwards, already at 35% in Iowa, seems to be breaking away from the pack.

I was disappointed when Edwards emerged yesterday. I'd hoped Wes Clark would. Among this crop of Democrats only Mark Warner and Wesley Clark have the actual leadership abilities and management tools needed to be successful Presidents. Because it is President, not American Idol. If the Democrats continue with naive and incompetent leadership another four years, the world's benchmark currency, which depends on a stable tradition of governance, will most likely shift from the dollar either to the Yen or the Euro. The strength and beauty of the U.S. is its multifaceted culture and diverse life force, but that is also its weakness as well - recently, questioned by Bernie Sanders, Ben Bernacke was forced to admit that our only comparable RE wages of rich and poor is Brazil.

The greatest crisis we face today in the U.S. is a management crisis. The other crisis; Iraq, economy, flow form that. We could easily fall into Third World status with continued inattention to management and pushing forth "bodice rippers," "rock stars," nostalgico candidates (and their wives and aunties), and unelectable candidates representing every ethnic, ideological and political tribe imaginable. If this crowd can't rise to Clark, Mark Warner must be recalled to service for the good of the country.

The Democrats have taken good strides this past year with Howard Dean's 50-state initiative, the new Democratic Congress and vital new people with a new Democratic attitude; people like Webb, Carol Shea-Porter, Joe Sestak and Patrick Riley. But Democrats have lost the field 49-1 three times in the last 50 years. One more catastrophic failure and for them the game's over.

Comments

Welcome Mr. Quigley (Josh - 2/3/2007 4:43:30 PM)

I agree with you that Webb's speech set the tone for the future politics of the 21st Century.

I'm proud you've chosen to share your excellent work with our community.

Btw, The Euro is now the #1 currency. Passed us up about a month ago.

nice.

Thank you, Josh (Bernie Quigley - 2/3/2007 5:00:06 PM)

My heart is in Virginia, but my wife and kids are here in New Hampshire. I was a little disappointed with the response I received on DKos - fierce hate mail. I think this could be troubling for the Democrats: denial, and a return to the old. There is a need to face the demographics and the demographics in population and economy point South, Southwest and West to burgeoning interior economy. We can't look to the past and the old models. Mark Warner has the keenest eye and the keenest mind. I met him up here last October. Y'all need to get him back. I hear that his family doesn't want him to be President. But the country needs him. He only lives across the river. He can be the Stay-at-Home-Dad President and do it by email (like I do)or with one of those funny, little telephones he makes. (But his kids will say, as mine do: "Daddy, when you were a little boy did you want to be a "stay at home Dad" when you grew up?" - They don't think I do anything.)

If I Knew How (Newport News Dem - 2/3/2007 6:43:02 PM)

to upload a picture, I would display the bumber sticker that I have on my car.

Warner - Clark '08

The Warner part has since become problematic!

I know this can get you villified in some Democratic circles, but I can away very impresesed with the Biden speech today and Richardson was good in presenting his bone fides.

Thank you, Lowell - thougths on John and Elizabeth (Bernie Quigley - 2/3/2007 7:24:18 PM)

I've been pressing this past year to push the Democrats in two directions, one forward, one back - I understand that many party people don't want to do that, but I feel we are at the turning of a great change; it is in our reach and we have to grasp it. If we don't; if we slip back, the formidable Mike Bloomberg, mayor of NY, will put his half billion bucks up for a new political party. But for us to take the initiative in our century we have to identify that which is good and nurture it, and quickly push aside past attitutes which will hold us back. I have real affection for John and Elizabeth as he was my Senator in NC and my kids were all born in NC and Virginia. They could well be a benevolent force. As I wrote to my family people in North Carolina about his speech yesterday: "I think it might be a karma thing going on with John and Elizabeth. It is time for our country to return to itself and more than any of the other candidates, they bring us there. . . There is a common quality to them that defines us as we are and not what we want to be - wanting to be something else has made us unhealthy and dangerous. . . People up here like John and Elizabeth . . . we have seen varied faces of the South since Watergate - Carter, Clinton, Bush [Jack-Legged Yankee Interloper], Wes Clark and now John and Elizabeth - they embody the true values of the South - family, faith, community . . ." But a new Democratic model featuring Mark Warner, Wes Clark, Kathleen Sebelius and Jim Webb is a Southern/Midwestern Quarternity on which a rock-solid 20-year plan can be built to bring in all the South, the West and the Midwest, and all these candidates are agreeable to the North as well. I am convinced through personal experience that the North needs the South to bring it forward, morally and spiritually, and that will be our fate. Best, Bernie

Could well be. (Bernie Quigley - 2/4/2007 6:59:18 AM)

Could well be. I have my own demographics I use based on generational shifts (as per William Strauss and Neil Howe's "The Fourth Turning"). The fourth post-war generation has at the moment just started its rise, but it is clashing with the values (and the money) of the second and third which are still dominating the process. It might take a little longer for the fourth generation to territorialize the process (and just as long for the second generation to lose its economic grip on the process). But it always does. And the fourth generation clearly picks Jim Webb, Wes Clark and Mark Warner. It is a clear deliniation.